ricane, she was drifting under it. De
Spain realized that his helpless legs would not carry him farther. His
hands, freezing to the pommel, no longer supported him. They finally
slipped from it and he fell prostrate in the snow beside his horse.
When he would cry out to her his frozen lips could mumble no words. It
was the fight no longer of a man against nature, but only of an
indomitable soul against a cruel, hateful death. He struggled to his
feet only to fall again more heavily. He pulled himself up this time
by the stirrup-strap, got his hands and arms up to the pommel, and
clung to it for a few paces more. But he fell at last, and could no
longer rise from the ground. The storm swept unceasingly on.

The Lady, checked by the lines wrapped on his arm, stopped. De Spain
lay a moment, then backed her up a step, pulled her head down by the
bridle, clasped his wooden arms around her neck, spoke to her and,
lifting her head, the mare dragged him to his feet. Clumsily and
helplessly he loosened the tugs and the whiffletree, beat his hands
together with idiotic effort, hooked the middle point of the
whiffletree into the elbow of his left arm, brought the forearm and
hand up flat against his shoulder, and with the hitching-strap lashed
his forearm and upper arm tightly together around the whiffletree.

He drew the tugs stiffly over the Lady's back, unloosed the cinches of
the saddle, pushed it off the horse and, sinking into the snow behind
her, struck with his free arm at her feet. Relieved of the saddle, the
Lady once more started, dragging slowly behind her through the snow a
still breathing human being. Less than an hour before it had been a
man. It was hardly more now, as the Lady plodded on, than an insensate
log. But not even death could part it again from the horse to which de
Spain, alive, had fastened it.

The fearful pain from the tortured arm, torn at times almost from its
socket, the gradual snapping of straining ligaments, the constant
rupture of capillaries and veins sustained his consciousness for a
while. Then the torturing pain abated, the rough dragging shattered
the bruised body less. It was as if the Lady and the storm together
were making easier for the slowly dying man his last trail across the
desert. He still struggled to keep alive, by sheer will-power,
flickering sparks of consciousness, and to do so concentrated every
thought on Nan. It was a poignant happiness to summon her picture to
his fa